SunChips Marketers Should Be Fired
During lunch today, while enjoying my tasty, crispy bag of SunChips, I noticed a couple of odd things while reading the package. On the front of the package, there is writing of how SunChips have “30 percent less fat that regular potato chips”. Out of curiosity, I turned the bag over and started reading the nutrition information. At the top of the information, they state:
“Fat content of regular potato chips is 15g per 1.5oz serving; fat content of SunChips bran Multigrain Snacks is 9g per 1.5 oz. serving”
15g for potato chips, and 9g for SunChips. Look odd to you? Well let me break it down. 100 percent “more” than 9 grams of fat would be 18 grams of fat. Potato chips have 15 grams (as they stated), which is actually 6 grams more than 9 grams, which is also 2/3 more than 9 grams. 2/3 as a percentage is 66.66%. So instead of having “30 percent less” than potato chips, they actually have 66.66 percent less, more than twice as less fat that they had stated. If I was a consumer buying chips as a snack, I would definitely be more enthused at a package that read “66 percent less fat that potato chips”, than “30 percent less”. The marketing department must have all slept through their math classes in school. They were probably the same people who went by the “when am I ever going to use this” philosophy in high school….
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***Edit - here I am making mistakes as well.. I did the math wrong, but I’ll keep the error above posted because I think its funny that I made an error also. But they are still wrong. The correct math is “(15g * (x / 100)) = 6″. So solve for x. Divide by 15 and you get: (X / 100) = (6/15). Finally, multiply by 100 and you get X = .4, 40 percent. The error was that you have to solve for the difference between 15 and 9 (which equals 6), and not 9 (which was done originally). So it should read “40 percent less fat than potato chips”. Now back to the original post….
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One more thing that struck me as odd, is that on the other side of the nutritional information, it reads:
“When choosing a multigrain snack, SunChips brand original flavor Multigrain Snacks are a smart choice because they are made whole grains to support heart health and a one ounce serving has 0 grams trans fat. This package contains 1.5 ounces.”
0 grams? Why would they mention 0 grams for a 1 ounce serving? Why would they just say that it contains no grams of trans fat? Why specifically say “for a once ounce serving”. I’m thinking that it does contain trans fat, but at a fraction less than one so they can legally say “0 grams”. The package of sunchips is a 1.5 ounce serving, and they explicitly say that right after the statement about 1 serving having 0 grams. I think the 1.5 ounce serving pushes it over the threshold to where they would have to say that it contains 1 gram of trans fat. Sound likely? Well it did to me, until I looked back over to the nutritional information, and noticed that it still read “Trans Fat 0g” for 1.5 ounces. So one more error on the marketing side. They could have just said “SunChips have no trans fat!”, to avoid confusion, and to avoid further questions from people like me :)
If you want to contact SunChips and tell them that their Marketers need to be replaced, then feel free to contact them at the number specified on the package: “Questions or Comments? 1-800-352-4477″ :)